A tubular gripping device may be used to engage and manipulate a tubular during wellbore operations. Generally, a tubular gripping device is installed in a drill rig during drilling and/or completing a wellbore to grip and move the tubulars being run in or tripped out of a wellbore. Some common oilfield tubulars include, for example, casing, including various forms of wellbore liners, and drill pipe. Such tubulars often include a threaded box end. As will be appreciated, in general drill pipe is formed with an integral threaded box end, while a joint of casing is generally used with a coupling installed on a pin end thereof. The coupling generally has two threaded box ends, one of which is threaded onto the casing joint and the other of which remains open for threaded engagement with another casing joint when forming a casing string.
It is common practice to mount a tubular gripping device on a drive apparatus such as a top drive or other torque generating device suspended above hole center in order to impart rotational and axial drive to the tubular gripping device. Some gripping devices for oilfield tubulars, for example, are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,311,792, issued November, 2001 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,742,584, issued June, 2004, both to TESCO Corporation.
While such tubular gripping devices are useful, some operations may best be served by avoiding the use of gripping devices with slips, which may mark the wall of the tubular.